Sorry about the breathing, i’m using phone/desktop mics and haven’t worked out a fix yet. If you know of an easy fix let me know. also I’m moving to Tuesday releases for my sanity.

In this episode I read The Abominations of Yondo by Clark Ashton Smith, give a little commentary, and rant/rave about language in Role Playing Games. Included below are the Language Rules I’ve worked up, these are preliminary house rules so be gentile. Also let me know what you think of the story, this may be something I do as a regular thing if people like having Public Domain Appendix N Short Stories Read to them.

One of the first Dragon Magazine issues I actually picked up was issue 247, It had rules for a new Jack-Of-All-Trades “Taltos” class, an article detailing Rakasta subspecies for Mystara, and an article called “Give them Pidgins” which gave languages a little more depth.

========== HouseRules ==========

Languages

AD&D 2nd Edition and Adventurer Conqueror King both use proficiency as a way to customize your character, and in both cases they are few and hard won. Learning an entire language to the level of basic competency as allowed by your intelligence score requires one Proficiency slot after you’ve taken any bonus languages you are entitled to due to class or intelligence. A language can be natural, constructed, or a creole composed of several languages spoken in a given area, additionally languages may be spoken, or signed.

Pidgins

When first learning a language a Character can elect to learn a pidgin form of the language. A player can take up to 1/2 their intelligence score (rounded down) in pidgins. A pidgin consists of an A language they are learning, and a B language they already know. When communicating under stress, or anything but the most rudimentary information, with a person speaking the Pidgin, or a person speaking a creole of the A and B languages, they make an 9+ throw, if the being with whom they wish to communicate only knows the A language then its an 11+ throw.

Related Languages

Just as with a pidgin a character may attempt communication with another character who speaks a related language on an 9+ throw if its just another dialect and a 11+ throw if its a related but distinct language.